Amazed at how few entries in this category. We think of the daily stand-alone feature as the bread and butter of newspapers today. Maybe the lack of entries reflects a serious effort on behalf of participants to self-edit for quality. The feature begs for any number of elements to really work. The slice-of-life is a good place to start, getting the moment, catching emotion, anything that stands out as unique (or at least unusual) all in way that tells a story no matter how small is what these judges really look for. In the end we could only bring ourselves to award two places. Everything else feel short in too many areas. There were some nice aesthetics that lacked moment and too many images that lacked in several technical areas. There were also a couple of decent frames that were clearly outtakes from general news coverage that probably wouldn’t have placed in that category either, but sparked the discussion between the judges as to whether we’ve moved into an era where categories don’t seem to matter anymore. First edged into the top spot because it was clearly composed, exposed nicely with a genuine moment. The judges all but wondered if the next frame might have been the little girl falling face first into the flowers (though clearly it wasn’t because THAT would have been the winning frame). Second had a nice sense of moment, a found feature with good emotion. The blurry tree trunk on the left did not strike us as an effective framing element and detracted from the overall image.
Judges:
Sean D. Elliot/The Day, Peter Huoppi/The Day, Dana Jensen/The Day
Judges Comments
Amazed at how few entries in this category. We think of the daily stand-alone feature as the bread and butter of newspapers today. Maybe the lack of entries reflects a serious effort on behalf of participants to self-edit for quality. The feature begs for any number of elements to really work. The slice-of-life is a good place to start, getting the moment, catching emotion, anything that stands out as unique (or at least unusual) all in way that tells a story no matter how small is what these judges really look for. In the end we could only bring ourselves to award two places. Everything else feel short in too many areas. There were some nice aesthetics that lacked moment and too many images that lacked in several technical areas. There were also a couple of decent frames that were clearly outtakes from general news coverage that probably wouldn’t have placed in that category either, but sparked the discussion between the judges as to whether we’ve moved into an era where categories don’t seem to matter anymore. First edged into the top spot because it was clearly composed, exposed nicely with a genuine moment. The judges all but wondered if the next frame might have been the little girl falling face first into the flowers (though clearly it wasn’t because THAT would have been the winning frame). Second had a nice sense of moment, a found feature with good emotion. The blurry tree trunk on the left did not strike us as an effective framing element and detracted from the overall image.